Operation Valentine (Hazel Oaks Resort Book 1)

by Kelsey McKnight

  He began taking the things from his bag one by one, milling through the suite to find the perfect places for them. The potted purple violets with lavender strands for peace and calming he picked up at a garden center went on the nightstand and a trio of artisanal hot sauces from some place in Houston were put on the polished wood countertop of the kitchen. The chocolate-covered strawberries he’d had one of the chefs make went into the fridge. After taking care of a few other things, he turned on some music, old 70’s hits he wasn’t familiar with, but Mr. Sutton promised the pair would love.

  The sound of muffled voices drawing near made him cringe. He glanced at the clock to see Nat was actually ahead of schedule. How did that happen? She was always exactly on time. For a split second, he debated hiding in one of the closets and sneaking out when the Kents went to dinner but knew that was stupid. Besides, the lock clicked, and the door swung open. He was out of time.

  “You’ll have a gorgeous view of the lake,” Nat was saying as she stepped inside, followed by a couple in their late fifties or early sixties. Nat’s smile faltered when her hazel gaze swept over Hudson and he gave a small wave.

  “Hello,” he said, half hiding the tote bag behind his back. “I’m Hudson Dougal, and I’ll be your adventure coordinator for the duration of your stay.” He shook hands with Mr. and Dr. Kent, avoiding Nat’s fiery glare. She was looking at him like he just tossed the Kents’ luggage straight through the balcony’s glass doors.

  But Nat regained her composure and swept past Hudson to the kitchenette, holding a welcome basket with a bottle of champagne, two glasses, and assorted cheeses and fruits with roses in full bloom tucked between the offerings. She heaved it onto the counter and gave the bottles of sauce a sidelong glance. “Would you like me to open the champagne for you?” she asked the Kents evenly.

  “No, thank you,” Mina answered, shrugging off her coat and dropping it over the back of the couch. She was a slight woman with angular features and a dark bob streaked with gray. She wasn’t smiling. In fact, she merely looked tired.

  “We’ll worry about that later,” added Marvin. He was rounder than his wife, balding and red-cheeked. But he didn’t look pleased to be in the Lake View Suite either.

  Then Mina opened the door to the bedroom and said over her shoulder, “What lovely violets.”

  “They’re for you, ma’am,” Hudson said, bubbling with pleasure at the faint sound of joy in her voice.

  She turned to him, a small smile on her lips. “Let me guess. George told you?”

  “A man never reveals his secrets,” he replied seriously.

  Marvin clapped him on the back. “And I see some of my favorite sauces. I tell you, if this is how the rest of the trip is going to be, it might not be so bad.”

  Hudson was fit to burst. He’d been with the Kents for only a few minutes and already had brightened their mood. He dared a look in Nat’s direction to see the same polite smile on her face. He couldn’t see past the mask if she was impressed, annoyed, or just plain angry. Knowing her, it was probably a heady cocktail of all three.

  “If there’s nothing else, we’ll leave you to settle in now.” Nat slipped a piece of paper out of the red folder she held and handed it to Mina. “Here’s tonight’s itinerary. Tomorrow’s will be delivered along with your breakfast. If you have any questions at all, my number is right on the top.”

  “Thank you,” Mina said, not bothering to look at it.

  Hudson gave them a small wave. “See you tomorrow.”

  He followed Nat out of the room, half expecting her to spin on her heel and yell at him as soon as the suite’s door was closed. But she silently walked down the hallway toward the elevator and pressed the down button. When it opened and revealed an empty space, she motioned for him to follow. Hudson wanted to cut and run, take the stairs. Being trapped in an elevator with her seemed like a dumb move, but he didn’t have much of a choice.

  She stayed quiet until the doors slid shut, then rounded on him. “What do you think you were doing?”

  “Spreading some cheer?”

  “You can’t just break into a guest’s room like that.”

  “Hey, I didn’t break in. I had a key.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “And who gave you a key?”

  “Like I said before, a man never reveals his secrets. And why are you so bothered? They loved the extra touches. You saw how they actually smiled.”

  Nat bit her lower lip and closed her eyes, opening them when the elevator stopped at the ground floor. She stepped out and he trailed after her. While he had been expecting her to be a little mad, he didn’t really see what the problem was. Nat was too high-strung for her own good.

  “You know, Nat, I did want your approval on this, but I didn’t want to risk messing with your innate need to micromanage,” he said lowly, coming to walk beside her through the lobby.

  She stopped and stared at him, a confused look on her face. “I do not micromanage.”

  He raised a brow. “You’re joking, right? You schedule things to the minute.”

  “That’s called efficiency.”

  “It’s called micromanaging.”

  Nat took a deep breath and her shoulders relaxed. “I disagree, but you might be right about the little touches.”

  “Might?”

  “Don’t push it,” she shot back. “Besides, how did you know they’d like all of that. There’s no way you got that lucky.”

  “I called Mr. Sutton and asked for some personal details on the couple, how to make them more at home, what they liked, things along those lines. He gave me a list.”

  Nat stared at him incredulously.

  “Well, that was a good idea,” she managed to say before opening her journal and writing a few things down.

  “What’s that?” Hudson asked, interrupting her thoughts. When she looked up, he was grinning, holding his hand to his ear. “Did Natalie Keller just give me a compliment? That’s like two in a week. I may die happy.”

  Her mouth twitched, and he thought she might nearly be smiling. “Just take it and run, Hudson.”

  He nodded and shoved his hands in his pockets. “Until next time.”

  *

  Nat

  Nat stretched while she waited for Terry outside the kitchen’s loading bay doors. Terry refused to leave out the employee exit, saying she wasn’t going to walk all the way around the back of the lodge when she had a perfectly good door right beside her office.

  She had her left foot in her left hand while her leg was bent at the knee. She pulled her foot, trying to stretch her quad before their usual three-mile run. Since she was just getting Terry into running, it’d be pretty embarrassing if she was the one who cramped up.

  As she continued to stretch, she thought about the Kents. Technically, her workday was already over, so she should go home and order in a fabulous meal and have a glass of wine. She had a new novel burning a hole into her nightstand, begging her to read it. But at the same time, she wanted to make sure everything went well. She had to fight the urge to go home after the run to clean up and eat before returning back to the lodge to check in on the Kents.

  And then she heard Hudson’s voice in her head, telling her she kept micromanaging everything. She’d never really considered what she did to be micromanaging. Instead, she looked at it as ensuring the job was done efficiently and correctly. Her parents had raised her that way. On every military base they’d been on, she’d been given lists with chores or expectations for the day, and she carried the list making into her adult life, where she thought it helped her to be a better employee, and later, a better supervisor.

  But maybe she should relax a little, at least about the Kents when her workday was over. She had a team below her, a team she trained, that would be able to handle things while she was gone. They knew their jobs and her expectations well enough to not let things go to seed when Nat left the office. She decided to stop by the bakery on her way to work the next morning and pick up some donuts for her c
rew.

  The metal door connecting to the kitchen swung open and Terry appeared, ready for their run in a pair of sneakers, leggings, and her puffy winter coat. “Have I mentioned how much I hate you lately?” she asked, pulling on her gloves and hat.

  “No, I believe the words you used were despise and loathe. I appreciate the effort to mix it up.”

  “When I asked you to get me to exercise more, I thought maybe we’d take a Zumba class with a hot instructor and then casually drink green smoothie things at a vegan cafe like normal people,” she said, starting to stretch.

  Already warmed up, Nat started to jog in place. “We could still do that. I have always thought a Zumba class would be fun.”

  “Cool, so let’s find a gym for next week that has classes so you can never torture me with running ever again.”

  “Running is so good for you and it helps you think, you know, just clear your mind and focus on a simple task.”

  “What, like not dying?”

  “Whatever works for you.”

  A few months ago, after speaking to her doctor about her health Terry wanted to get into better shape and asked Nat for help. Nat loved exercise. She swam three times a week and tried to run daily. To her, it really was a release. Maybe it was easier to say it was a release for her mind. She didn’t need to make a list about running, or look up the best running paths, or the correct way to run. Her body took over and she reveled in it. It had been her release for as long as she could remember. After all, there were plenty of paths to run on at a military base. No matter where she went, what country she was in, what language she spoke, she could always go running.

  As she and Terry started on the path that would take them around the side of the lake and into the woods, Nat felt her shoulders drop from the uptight and stressed position they seemed fixed in during the day. The tension in her neck dissipated and relaxation started with each inhale through her nose, exhale through her mouth. She just knew she’d feel great after the run.

  “So,” Terry started through winded breaths. “What’s going on with you and Hudson?”

  “You know that couple I told you about, the Kents? Hudson was standing next to me when Mr. Sutton asked me to help and volunteered his services, so now, we’re trying to do it together.”

  “Right. So, the fact that you guys are spending more time together is—”

  “It’s strictly work-related.”

  “That’s a shame. He’s one good-looking man.”

  “Maybe running is bad for you, Terry. You’re clearly not getting enough oxygen to the brain.”

  “Hold on, let me catch my breath,” she spouted, taking a few deep breaths.

  They didn’t usually talk much when they ran, rather, they enjoyed each other’s company in the silence. Well, other than Nat occasionally saying encouraging things to keep Terry moving while Terry muttered some colorful things in objection to the idea of taking one more step. Considering she and Terry saw each other all the time, she wondered why Terry was bringing it up now when conversation wasn’t exactly easy.

  “Okay,” Terry managed as they settled in at a more leisurely walking pace. “All I’m saying is with projects like this, there’s no way romance isn’t going to get mixed in. You’re literally trying to reignite a spark.”

  “Except Hudson and I never had a spark to reignite. It’s completely different,” Nat said firmly. Where Terry was getting the idea that their project would somehow make a little romance between them was unknown to her.

  “You’re wrong there. When you two fight, let me tell you, fireworks.”

  “Look, he’s planning to move to California soon. There’s no point starting anything anyway.”

  “I notice you didn’t object. So, you see the fireworks?”

  Nat thought about what Terry had said, giving it some real consideration. There were definitely fireworks in her office with that whole snowmobile story, and she did appreciate the effort he put into making the Kents’ room a little more personal. But they were still oil and water, her focusing on tasks and reason while he floated through the day. In some respects, she could recognize they were teetering somewhere between love and hate, but even those words were too strong for whatever actual feelings she had. Did she have feelings? Or was the entire operation just making her read too much into things?

  “Listen, I’m not saying you need to marry the guy or even make a pros and cons list about him like we’re living in a romcom. But possibly, in that regimented brain of yours, there has to be some kind of fantasy world you go to. In that world, would you consider dating Hudson, letting him whisk you off on some adventure?”

  “Yes,” she answered before she could overthink the image of her and Hudson racing through the snow on his snowmobile at sunset.

  “Then just maybe you could consider it in this world.”

  “Being attracted to someone physically and for the thrill of it isn’t a great way to start a…a..”

  “Relationship?” Terry offered.

  “Yeah. I’m mature enough to admit he’s handsome and has some fun qualities, but that’s not enough to really build on.”

  “Oh? Why not? If you think he’s cute and fun, I don’t see the harm in seeing where things go.”

  Nat glanced around at the empty lake, lit by the last sparks of daylight. “I’m not the kind of person that just sees where things go, Ter. In theory, dating someone like Hudson would be an adventure in and of itself. But on paper, our incompatibility is too great.”

  “So you’re saying there’s a chance?” Terry pushed with a smile.

  “I’m going to make you run five miles if you keep this up.”

  “Fine, fine, my lips are sealed…for now.”

  Before Terry could go back on her word, Nat picked up the pace, settling into a jog. Terry did her best to keep up and Nat was grateful for the silence. But still, the peace she had longed for all day was unobtainable when thoughts of Hudson kept bouncing around in her mind, begging her to let her imagination run as fast as she did.

  *

  After her run, Nat snuck back into the hotel after Terry had gone to her car, promising herself she’d just sneak a peek at the Kents’ dinner. It was easy to not engage, as she was still dressed from her run in leggings and her black parka with her hair in a ponytail. She would never let a guest see her in such a state.

  She cut through the busy kitchen and stood on her toes to look out the circular window on one of the swinging doors that led to the dining room. Nat expected to see them gazing at each other over a perfect five-course meal. Their enraptured faces illuminated by candlelight.

  But Nat didn’t see a happy couple. She didn’t even see an angry couple. Mrs. Kent was sitting at the table alone, staring down at her appetizer. The other place setting was empty, the wineglass not even filled. She’d gone to dinner alone, been served alone, and was now eating alone. Considering Nat did that just about every night, she knew how lonely it was. And then another thought dawned on her. How much lonelier it was when you had someone to eat with and you still ate alone. She had to find Mr. Kent.

  Nat stormed out of the kitchen and went up to their room, careful to stay out of sight. She contemplated what she would say, trying to make it sound as professional as she could. “Mr. Kent, I noticed you weren’t at dinner. Was there something wrong with the menu? I could easily have the chef prepare you something so you could join your wife for the remainder of the evening.” Yeah, that sounded right, though, she was tempted to say something like, “Hey, jerk, do you think one of the reasons your marriage is failing is because your wife is eating alone while you hang out in the room?”

  Nat took a deep breath before knocking on the door of the Lake View Suite, silently wishing she’d taken a moment to change out of the gym clothes. Nonetheless, she knocked on the door. No one answered. She knocked again. Still, no answer. Nat knocked a third time and listened at the door for any sounds of life. Nothing.

  Okay, so if he wasn’t in his room, where
was he? Nat grabbed her phone from her pocket and called Hudson. He had apparently gotten a new one, based on the ridiculous text he’d sent her that afternoon after the Kents had checked in, teasing her about how she’d deviated from the original plan and gave the couple a fruit and cheese basket instead of flowers.

  “Didn’t you just leave? Are you missing me that much already?” Hudson asked after picking up on the first ring.

  Nat decided to cut right to the chase. “Do you happen to know where Mr. Kent is?”

  “Isn’t he at dinner?”

  “You’d think so.”

  “What are we going to do about people who don’t want to live by a minute-by-minute schedule? Should we ban them from the hotel?”

  “Mrs. Kent is at dinner; Mr. Kent isn’t.”

  There was a slight pause. “What? That makes no sense.”

  “Yes, I know, that’s why I’m calling. I just went to their room and there was no answer when I knocked.”

  Hudson gasped loudly into the phone. “Do you think she killed him?”

  “I don’t know why I even bother speaking to you.”

  “Relax, I’m leaving my office and looking for him now. I’ll call you if I find him.”

  “I’d prefer if you found him alive.”

  “I’m sure she didn’t kill him; it wasn’t on the schedule.” And he hung up the phone.

  *

  Hudson

  Hudson was glad he had stayed late at work that evening. Usually he was out the door at the end of the day. But that night he had chosen to hang out in his office for a bit, at least until after the Kents’ dinner, just in case something went wrong.

  He checked the lobby, gym, pool, cafe, the buffet, and spa, before checking the guest study. Calling the space a study didn’t seem to do it justice. It was more of a library with a high ceiling and tall, dark wooden bookshelves filled with everything from children’s paperbacks to well-worn hardcover novels. There were comfortable wine-red armchairs scattered throughout the room, tucked between bookshelves and flanking the massive stone fireplace that always gave the study a delicious, inviting warmth.